Flights of Fantasy

It looks like the aftershocks of Lord of the Rings are starting to quiver underfoot.

Here are some pretty looking epic fantasy films bulging with stars, ready to burst onto your cinema screens. They all come from reputable source material apparently and they look reasonably well crafted.

Stardust


The Golden Compass


Also, shots are leaking out of The Dark Is Rising set. Looking forward to this but terribly weary of Walden and their cookie cutter adaptations. They'd better not fuck with my childhood



And in other adaptation news. Filmstalker reports that Christopher Lee is off of Sweeney Todd because Tim Burton's extra characters had been removed. Burton tinkering with Sondheim, hmmm, as long as he isn't getting Elfman to rescore it, I'm happy.

Eragon (or, Harry Skywalker of the Narnian Rings)

Farm boy, dragon, princess, mentor, evil tyrant.

Been there, done that.

There is not new ground to cover here. In fact, at times the ground is so well worn that the sides of the furrow come up to your armpits. Eragon sitting on the hill staring at the Tatooine’s Alagaësia's setting sun; Cloaked Eragon entering Jabba’s Durza's palace; the attack of ring wraiths Ra'zacs – at times scenes seemed to be a direct and open homage to the classics of the genre.

Eragon, for all its clichés is an engaging little film. The leads are likable, the effects passable, and the narrative will easily keep the attention of kids and kids at heart. A little charmer is all it is going to be though. Like the Potter films (excepting Cuarron’s effort) and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Eragon suffers from being adapted from a best-selling book. Scenes seem to have been shot because they had to be and the end result is less cohesive for it.

It’s a few weeks before school holidays and if this is your bag then catch it before you have to share the cinema with a gaggle of screaming brats.